He Auctioned Our Week to My Best Friend, So I Took the Helm novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Terms

The foundation's office was a narrow brick townhouse with a blue door and a wall of baby photographs in the front hall.

Every one of them was a tiny person in a knitted hat, asleep under tubes.

I stood in front of the photos for a while before anyone came down.

"Mrs. Kemper."

Finnegan Lyle had traded the tuxedo for a grey sweater with the sleeves pushed up.

He had a nose that had been broken once and set a little crooked, and dark hair going grey above his ears.

Up close, in daylight, he looked tired in a way the stage had hidden.

"It's Samantha," I said. "I'd like to stop being Mrs. Kemper by the end of the week."

"All right, Samantha."

He led me up a flight of stairs to an office with a window onto the street, a desk full of paper, and a kettle.

He made me tea without asking, and put a plate of shortbread in front of me.

"I'm not hungry."

"You will be."

I decided to let that go.

"Here's what I want," I said. "The sale stands."

He had been about to sit down.

He sat anyway, slowly.

"I assumed you came to void it."

"I came to sign it. Seven days on the Marigold, hosted by Tobias Kemper, the winner is Brynn Stanwood. Everything on the card is true."

"Except that the boat belongs to you."

"Except that."

He looked at me over the kettle.

"May I ask why?"

"Because they paid twenty-five thousand dollars for a vacation on my father's boat," I said. "So they can have it. They can sit in his cockpit for seven days with me standing at the wheel."

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